


Orange Crush

by GRAYXOF



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Child Soldiers, Gen, Nuclear Family, haphazard historical context
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-01
Updated: 2016-09-01
Packaged: 2018-08-12 09:03:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7928830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GRAYXOF/pseuds/GRAYXOF
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"I was born on a battlefield. Raised on a battlefield. We were hunted like dogs, day after day... and then, he appeared. Saladin... he took me away from all that..."</i>
</p><p>  <i>"You mean Big Boss?"</i></p><p>Sniper Wolf meets a pack of Diamond Dogs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. FOLLOW ME (1988)

“ _Stand down!”_

The girl Ezo flinches at the shout and freezes, precariously. She’s on all fours in the shadow of a tank, cracked earth cold beneath her bare elbows and knees. The vehicle is abandoned– stalled– the only reliable cover in the center of the blasted, burned-out mountain camp that had been her home for fifteen days.

A _jash_ patrol had come down on them just before sunrise. Inevitable. Scavengers picking apart the dead and dying. Ezo had expected them, had expected to die with the rest of the refugees– people who had allowed her to drift along with them, shared their food when they had any. They hadn’t been a family, but they had been a unit.

She had not expected the counterfire, or the silence that settled in afterwards like a fog. No one had spoken of rebels in the area, and, anyway– rebels were never silent in battle.

A single shot thunders overhead. Ezo flinches again, harder this time. Rolls back on her heels, presses herself against the tank’s armor, and listens. The unmistakeable weight of a body hits the dust somewhere she can’t see.

“Good shot, Quiet.” It’s the same voice: masculine, worn, pleased. 

There’s a sharp, bone-chilling howl of wind, a few light footsteps, an affirming hum. Ezo blinks sweat from her eyes and nearly gasps– the pair are standing not ten meters from her shelter. A man in form-fitting black, all muscle, blood on his face and in his shaggy hair– and a woman, just as tall, in fatigues broken up by panels of mesh and a headscarf. She's shouldering a vicious sniper rifle like it's nothing. They cut a dramatic silhouette together.Ezo blinks again. People like these couldn’t have come from nowhere, and still– if she’s not careful, if she doesn’t look directly at them, they seem to fade back into the landscape.

The woman hums– is it a laugh?– and shakes his hand. Roughly. Almost as if she’s going to twist him down into the dirt. Ezo is captivated.

“Any survivors?” the man asks. The woman cocks her head, makes a few signs with her free hand Ezo doesn’t recognize.

“Shit.” He huffs, then whistles, and there’s an answering bark– and _they both turn to look right at her_. Ezo starts, tripping over her feet in an effort to get away. The sudden movement rushes all her blood to her head and she sways, slams her elbow into a protruding bolt. Shuts her eyes against the pain.

It only takes a second to get her bearings but when she does, the three of them– the man, the woman, and a _wolf_ – have her cornered. The woman is lowering her rifle (had she readied it so fast?). The man’s hands are open, palms up. His left hand, Ezo realizes, is a prosthetic. His face is lined with scars, his one good eye as clear and as blank as the sky, almost silver in the sun. There’s _something_ jutting out from his hairline but maybe it’s a trick of the–

A memory stirs, something she heard once, in passing. _A one-eyed man who fights like a demon. He will save us._

He kneels. Keeps his distance. The wolf sits obediently at his side, tongue lolling.

_Saladin._

“My Kurdish isn’t strong,” the demon says in butchered Kurmanji. Ezo stares, transfixed. In English again: “Do you know English? Uh, Arabic?” No response. To the woman: “Worth a shot… we’ll have to wait for Pequod, maybe he can talk to her. Change the LZ. And– give me your scarf.”

The woman tosses it to him. Her hair is dark, and there’s astrange shadow around her eyes _(or is there?)_.Ezo watches as she unholsters what looks like a small radio and hits a button. A blue holoscreen flickers to life, displaying the topography of the area and layers of text. She scrolls through a list of coordinates, selects a set so quickly it could’ve been random.

“You’re in shock,” the demon explains, drawing Ezo’s gaze from the strange technology. He offers her the shayla. His tone is calm, almost impatient, commanding. Warm. Ezo trusts him implicitly, without thinking, without caution. If they wanted to kill her, she would be dead.

_Saladin. Fights like a demon. If you see him, you’re already in Hell._

_(So who lives to tell the stories, then?)_

She scrunches the fabric, uses it to push sweat from her brow and arms, drapes it over a shoulder when she’s done. Stands. “Who are you?” She's proud that her voice doesn't shake, even with her heart pounding so hard it might come straight up out of her mouth.

Maybe he gets the tempo of the question, maybe it’s a lucky guess. “Call me Snake. This is Quiet, and this–“ he tugs the wolf under one arm, patting his flank roguishly– “is DD. He’s a good dog.”

Ezo has always loved dogs.

 

**°**

 

Pequod introduces them properly. The pilot’s Kurmanji is passable, enthusiastic, accented in a way Ezo can’t place. He sits next to her in the helicopter as Snake and Quiet finish cleaning up– arranging pick-up for the tank, collecting unused magazines and stray weapons, burning bodies. Her fingers fold into DD’s fur as he talks. He explains their mission (support for the resistance against _Al-Anfal)_ , their Mother Base (a big– _really_ big– bunch of platforms in the ocean, like a city– have you ever seen the ocean?), and asks, haltingly, if she’s got any people left anywhere (no, and hasn’t for years. _Nowhere to go now, either)_. And so–

“Can I come to your Mother Base?”

“The Commander won’t be happy. The Boss doesn’t want to leave you out here alone, though, and really, Miller won’t havea leg to stand on–“ Pequod dutifully swallows a grin. “Ah. That was bad of me. Anyway, _Commander_ Miller may act mean, but he likes kids. You won’t be the first one he’s allowed on base.”

“Kid?” Ezo snorts. “You– _Diamond Dogs_ – are an army? I can fight. I was born fighting.”

Pequod’s eyebrows vanish under his helmet. “Okay. Well, Commander Miller is pretty dead set against child soldiers– don’t look at me like that– but I can tell you, the Boss will appreciate your… he’ll hire anyone, if you can prove yourself useful. Hell, he kept Quiet around."

“Why can’t Quiet speak? Is it her real name?”

“Nah... she lost her voice. Or, I guess, it was taken from her.”

Ezo’s eyes go wide, imploring him to continue, but Pequod shakes his head. “Not my business to say how. Ultimately, she gave up everything for the Boss. Saved his life– both our lives– more times than I can count. She’s cool, but don’t let the Commander catch you hanging around her. He can be kinda–“ A burst of radio static interrupts him.“–and that’s my cue. Time to move out.”

She’s never flown in anything before, much less a Blackfoot armed and armored to the rotors, blasting Eurythmics, taking off with both doors open. Snake– the Boss– _Saladin_ pays no heed to their rapid ascent and sits on the pallet with his legs dangling over the edge. Ezo crawls to his side, keeping one hand on DD for balance so she can watch the scorched earth fall away beneath them. As everything she’s ever known blurs into lines on a map.

Quiet springs up next to them– _out of nowhere, are they all demons?–_ and immediately strips off her jacket, uncaps a canteen, and empties it over her head. Shakes droplets from her hair like a dog. Her skin looks too soft for the wiry muscle it covers, too thin. Translucent, almost.There’s a thick cord of scar tissue running down her throat all the way to her collarbone, and a pattern of fainter, mottled marking over her ribs. A furrow cuts from her hip to her breastbone, still flanked with the pocks left by medical staples, across a map that reads  _shrapnel,_ _heavy artillery, avalanche._

Ezo has seen enough corpses to know when she's looking at one. Quiet shouldn't be alive.

“How’s the new uniform?” Snake finally rolls the door shut.

Quiet, already busy checking and cleaning her massive gun, waves a palm in the universal sign for _mediocre._

“Hn. I’ll get R&D back on it once we’re home. Still, better than the last prototype. Or hypothermia.”

“Mm.”

Snake opens his mouth, turns to Ezo, remembers he can’t speak Kurmanji. Tries anyway. “Quiet… can’t breathe.” As if this is a common problem. 

“Hey, Boss!” Pequod calls back. “The kid’s name is Ezo! An orphan. Says she wants to work with Diamond Dogs.”

“Ezo, huh?” Snake settles on his haunches, sighs. Her eyes bore into him, attentive to her name. “Y’know– when I found DD, he was like you… had no pack… we don’t have names outside Heaven. When we land, you go by Wolf.”

 

**°**

 

Wolf falls asleep somewhere over Iran, wrapped in a Mylar blanket and curled up against DD, just like her new namesake. Quiet regards her idly. Analyzes. The girl is cut up and scraped all over, filthy, bright-eyed and blonde, tense under the Mylar– but she’d spent the first hour of the flight examining each and every photo Venom keeps taped to the walls and ceiling of the helicopter’s cargo bay, hassling Pequod for details on their subjects– D-Horse, wild jackals, exotic birds, targets, outposts, Kaz, Ocelot, Quiet. 1974. She can’t be more than thirteen years old.

“I keep pickin’ up strays,” Venom says, around a cigar.

Quiet doesn’t turn to look at him– she’s too comfortable, on her back with her knees drawn up, boots discarded on the floor. She does, however, open her iDroid’s messaging function.

In the years after XOF, after Lamar Khaate, after she came back from the desert and joined the Diamond Dogs for good, she and Venom had developed a system of communication that relied mainly on a collection of bastardized military hand signals and measures of songs from the decade's Billboard Top 100. It was more than anyone else cared to learn, so Ocelot had found an outdated iDroid in one of the R&D storage lockers and gotten the team install the latest software for her. A peace offering.

13:24 [ _Kaz'll be pissed._ ] She calls him Kaz because that’s what Venom calls him. That, and it’s faster to type than _Commander Miller._

“Yeah. I’ll deal with him.” Kaz is a sore subject. Quiet has heard all the tapes from before V came to, and while it had once been cut and dry, hating the Commander, these days… well. Kaz is just another dog in their master'skennel, no better than the rest of them. If anything, his choke chain is tighter than hers. Venom’s patience for the man is unfathomable, unnatural– _but that’s_ precisely _what it is, isn’t it? Conditioning._

Quiet chews the inside of her mouth, steers herself away from that particular train of thought. _Big Boss_ has a lot to answer for.

13:27 [ _What will you tell him?_ ]

Venom sighs heavily. When he speaks, his voice is thick with smoke, and something else. “The truth.”

 

**°**

 

 


	2. COLLAR ME (1988-89)

_The truth_ does nothing to pacify Commander Kazuhira Miller. 

“You’ve got to be _fucking_ kidding me,” he snarls, furiously limping across the tarmac of Mother Base’s Medical Platform to the helipad. Pequod keeps the ACC hovering barely a meter off the deck as Snake and DD drop down to meet the Commander. Wolf hesitates, waiting for Quiet, but the sniper just gives her a thumbs up and retreats to the copilot’s seat, leaning over to adjust the radio.

She steels herself and jumps after Snake. It’s easy, to follow him.

“We agreed _no goddamn child sol–“_

 “Easy, Kaz.” Snake holds up a hand, placing himself between his XO and the girl. Dismisses Pequod with a wave in the same motion. “She’s not a soldier.”

“What’s she doing on Mother Base, then?” The Commander’s empty sleeve snaps in the wind kicked up by the departing helicopter. Wolf stares, safely behind Snake’s thigh. Everything about him– the missing arm, the crutch, how his brow furrows under the aviators he’s wearing even on an overcast day like this– it all sets off alarm bells in her skull in a way that Snake and Quiet hadn’t _._ She’s seen men like him before, but they’ve always been alone, spitting mad, sick, desperate. Not in charge of a private military.

“Found her in a battlefield. Same as you.” Snake winces, and Wolf catches it. Whatever he said, it wasn’t the right thing to say.

Miller’s lip curls. “Is that right.” Wolf can’t read his expression at all, and it’s far worse than not understanding his language.

“Yeah, it is.” Snake sounds impossibly tired. “The kid’s name is Wolf. Speaks Kurdish– uh, Kurmanji. She can help in the mess hall, or something. Learn English, Russian.” Snake steps forward– Miller steps back, keeps the distance between them. Glowers at them both. Wolf holds his gaze, but Snake doesn’t bother.

“We don’t need her.” Miller shakes his head. “We’re mercenaries, Boss. Not philanthropists. You’re not saving her by bringing her here.”

“Nah,” Snake runs a hand over his face, back into his hair. Seems surprised when it comes away bloody. “I know. But we can give her a chance to save herself.”

That sets the Commander off again, lashing out against Snake’s patient monotone. Wolf withdraws from the conversation she wasn’t a part of to begin with, kneels next to DD, scratches behind his ears, lets him lick her face. She’d been scolded in the past ( _a past life, now_ ) for feeding stray dogs, for spending more time with them than with the people who came in and out of her life as often as the weather changed.

  _No dog is a match for a gun. We can’t afford a false sense of security._

Looking at DD, Wolf is pretty sure he could rip a semi-automatic right out of a soldier’s hands. Here, with his teeth a breath away from her face, in the shadow of a man who could kill her in a heartbeat– here, she’s never felt more at home. Right now, though… she’s the stray dog.

Miller doesn’t back down _,_ per se. Even Wolf can tell it’s a tactical maneuver when he turns away, shrugs one shoulder at Snake.“Well. It’s _your_ decision.” His voice is acid, ironic.

“Kaz…”

“You’re the Boss,” the Commander says. The words fall between them like spent bullet casings, and that’s the end of it.

 

**°**

 

They give Wolf a medical check, a change of clothes, and a bunk in the quarters out on Command Strut 4. She shares the room with two soldiers from the combat division and an engineer, all women. Laughing Dhole, Red Oryx, and Knife Kestrel. They show her how the showers work and share the off-brand M&M’s from their ration kits. Mother Base is spartan, almost alien, and luxurious beyond anything Wolf has experienced before. The map she receives is detailed, extensive, but filled in with blanks where it really counts.

It’s days before she sees Snake again. She’s balanced on a railing at the shooting range, watching the man called Ocelot or Shalashaska put his unit through their paces when he appears beside her. Snake is smoking, shirtless, sporting a fresh bandage over his side and a Serval under his arm. Wolf does her best not to be surprised, and he rewards her with half a smile. Sees what she’s watching.

“Know how to use a gun?” he asks, and huffs when he remembers the language barrier. Rephrases the question with a jerk of his head towards the men lined up at the range. Wolf nods. 

Snake hands her a compact pistol from his leg holster. She takes it– too boldly, as it turns out, because he immediately folds his palm over the muzzle. Pushes down. “Keep it pointed down, unless you’re aiming to fire,” he explains. Wolf lets him adjust her bony fingers until she’s holding the weapon correctly, feeling heady with cigar smoke.

Satisfied, he steps back, languidly, perfectly silent.“Okay. C’mon.”

He takes her over to the far end of the range, hooks a pair of earmuffs over her head, and sets her up in front of a target. Kneels to pull her feet into position. Wolf clicks the safety off automatically.

Snake gives her a thumbs up.

She empties the magazine too fast. Panics silently, locks her elbow. The recoil shoves her arm right, and when she’s finished only two shots have hit the white figure painted on the board: one in the shoulder, and one square in the forehead.

Snake grins, eye as bright as the electric ember of his cigar. “Good. That’s good. You’re a mess, but you’ve got the right instincts.”

They stay for another hour. Wolf goes through two more rounds of ammo– too fast, again– until Snake cuts her off, motions for her to stand back and watch. He loads the Serval, readies it in front of a target much farther away than the one she’d been aiming for. Every action he takes with the rifle is measured, careful, assured. Wolf fidgets. Adrenaline has made her impatient.

“Pretty good, ain’t he?”

The man called Ocelot or Shalashaska speaks to her in perfect Kurmanji, although it’s flattened somewhat by his accent. His trainees have long gone and she realizes he’s been watching them– no, watching _Snake–_ since the session ended, leaning against a support column like he owns the place.

Snake takes the shot. He handles the Serval like it’s nothing more than an extension of his metal arm.

“Sna– Sa– the Boss… he’s been showing me how.”

“He likes guns,” Ocelot smiles to himself, as if at a private joke. “Showed me a thing or two, once upon a time.”

“Did he teach Quiet?”

He cracks his knuckles one by one as Snake fires again. “No, not about war. She was already the best shot in this part of the world when he got here.”

“Can I learn?”

“Hm?”

“To shoot like her,” Wolf draws herself to her full height, back straight as a board. “I’ll work hard. I’ll do anything asked of–”

Ocelot appraises her like she’s a gun herself, deliberating. His pupils are blown wide and curious, even under the sun streaming through the grates in the ceiling. “Y’know,” he begins, as if it was his idea from the start, “you can never have too many snipers.”

 

**°**

 

Wolf goes to work. She takes a shift doing dishes in the mess hall and another sweeping shells from the floor of the shooting range. She picks up the languages of Mother Base through immersion, catches herself speaking a patchwork of four or five at once to get by. Wolf has never been shy, and after surviving in a combat zone for most of her life, there is nothing intimidating about living with the Diamond Dogs, who– however ruthless they may be on the battlefield– are disciplined, confident, and hardworking across the board. Some of the soldiers are almost as young as she is, and she pesters them into showing her the basics of CQC. Dhole cuts her hair and teaches her how to pitch a man forward (“–and break his neck, if you’re lucky,”) if he were to grab her from behind, the right place to bite into his arm. She learns how to dismantle half a dozen guns and put them back together, and runs every morning back and forth over the bridges between the struts with DD, pushing herself until she throws up. Puts on muscle like armor.

_Prove yourself._

She learns, too, about the pair who saved her– the legend of Tixij and the Horned Man, of Venom Snake and Naked Hound. Local cryptids and creatures of myth even on their own base. Kestrel, who had been held as a POW by the Red Army until Snake Fultoned her out in 1984, tells Wolf everything one evening in the R&D lab as they sort through boxes of combat knives.

“Everyone was scared when the Boss brought her in,” Kestrel says, around a can of zero-cal soda. “Especially the guys. She’s not really human, yeah? And even if she was, being an assassin _and_ a woman is bad enough.”

“Pequod said she saved the Boss’s life,” Wolf prompts.

“Her mission was to kill Big Boss, and she failed– _twice_. Then she shot a fighter jet out of the goddamn sky from the ACC on the way back here. Handcuffed.” Kestrel laughs. “I think if she’d really gone for broke, he’d be dead. Don’t repeat that,” she adds. “Although… he’s gotta know by now.”

“She was his enemy?”

“A lot of us were, before we joined up. Yeah, Quiet was a real problem. Shalashaska and the Commander had her living in a cell out on Medical. She could’ve walked free any time, with those abilities of hers– and I think she did, when no one was paying attention– but for the most part she behaved. It was a courtesy, you understand. Then… the Boss started taking her out on missions, and they became a real dream team.”

“Are they– uh…?” Wolf asks, and immediately goes red.

Kestrel laughs again, bringing the carbon blade she’s holding to her face like a courtier’s fan. “We’d all like to know, Wolf,” she mock-whispers, and Wolf grins with her, still embarrassed, relieved that she’s not being laughed _at._ “He’s a private man, and she’s never gonna say anything, obviously. But they fought through, like, twenty tanks and a gunship, once, and nearly died in the desert together. Oh, I’ll tell you about it– but if that’s not love…” she trails off, holds the blade against her chin thoughtfully. “That said, he looks at the Commander the same way, sometimes. ”

Wolf is hooked. “You mean Miller?”

“Yeah. They have a _hell_ of a history. But first, let me tell you about Lamar Khaate…”

 

**°**

 

Legends are one thing, gossip another, but Quiet in the flesh is harder to find. She spends most of her time out in the field with Snake, and when she _is_ back on the base, she keeps to herself. It’s by accident that Wolf runs into her on the top deck of the Command tower. Or, more correctly, she runs into Commander Miller, nearly knocks him over as she rounds a corner at top speed.

“Sir–!” Wolf stands at attention, then breaks her clumsy salute too soon because she’s twisting over to pick up his sunglasses, which have skittered to the deck. Gets sweaty fingerprints all over the lenses in her haste. “Sorry– I’ll be more careful–“ 

Her heart is hammering in her chest. She’s been chewed out a few times before by now. Not by _him,_ but by her work supervisors, or by security patrols for wandering where she shouldn’t. Wolf can take a dressing-down, but she's heard enough about the Commander to expect the worst.

It doesn’t come. Miller blinks the daylight out of his damaged eyes, takes the aviators from her and cleans them, with great effort, on his shirt. “I hear you’re making yourself useful,” he says, and his voice is so different than the one he uses to bark orders, or when Snake is in the room. It’s raw, open, reedy with exhaustion. He’s younger than she thought he was.

“I– I am doing my best. Sir. Thank you, for letting me–“

“Don’t,” Miller slides his shades back into place. “If it was up to me, you wouldn’t be here.”

Wolf’s face falls, and he sighs. Elaborates. “You’ll never have a normal life, if you stay.”

She doesn’t understand, and that makes her bold.She parrots what she’s heard the soldiers say. “With respect, sir– normal was Hell, where I grew up. This is Heaven.”

A sneer cuts Miller’s face in half like an open wound. “Oh, spare me the Big Boss _bullshi–_ “ The words die in his mouth as a gloved hand claws into his shoulder– the bad one– and the rest of Quiet materializes after it, muscle-first. Miller can’t shrug her off fast enough. It makes Wolf second-guess why they're both up here. Alone. “For fuck’s sake!”

Quiet looks pointedly at Wolf, then at the Commander, snaps her teeth at him with a warning click. To Wolf’s amazement, he calms down. Reins himself in.

“Ha,” Miller settles back into his sneer with no grace at all. “She’ll figure it out, sooner or later.” 

Quiet signs back at him. Wolf catches a rude gesture she’s seen thrown around a few times, but if Miller notices, he doesn’t rise to it. “I won’t stop you from following a phantom. That’s your call. You do your job, I'll do mine... just don't forget who it is you're _really_ working for.” 

He storms off before Wolf can ask what he means. Quiet also walks away– in the opposite direction– and after a beat of indecision, Wolf follows her. She trails her up the last flight of stairs to the roof of the tower, takes the steps two at a time. A fog has been rolling in all morning and every surface is slick with it. It muffles the echo of their boots on the tar, makes the air heavy and soft. Nothing can be seen of the ocean.

“What is the phantom?” Wolf hadn’t recognized the English word when the Commander spat it out. “I thought–“

Quiet rounds on her, and for a split second Wolf thinks she’s going to be snapped at, like a belligerent puppy. It’s a surprise, then, to see that the sniper’s expression is profoundly _sad_. She shakes her head once, paces briefly, then sits down cross-legged next to a trap door in the roof and motions for Wolf to do the same. 

_V_

 Quiet writes the letter into the condensation gathered on the steel with a calloused finger. She’s humming, low in the back of her throat.

“V… Venom– the Boss?” Wolf considers it, remembers his hands wrapping hers around a gun, the wormwood smoke of his cigars, the way he’d looked at Quiet, back in Iraq. _He looks at the Commander the same way._

_The one-eyed man fights like a demon. If you see him–_

“We called him Saladin. A demon who would save us by taking us to Hell, but I… I could never imagine a place worse than what I knew. When I met you, in the mountains… I did not care if I lived.” She swallows hard, searching for the right English. “Here, he is Snake. I am Wolf. Ocelot, Kestrel, Oryx, _Hound…_ we are all Dogs. No matter what else he is, I will follow him.”

Quiet wipes away the _V_ with her palm. Starts over.

 _THIS IS NOT_      _OUTER HEAVEN_

“It is mine,” Wolf says firmly. “And yours, too. Right?”

Quiet looks to where the horizon is blurred out by the mist, stops humming. For a crystalline moment, Wolf is certain she’s going to speak. 

 

**°**

 

**Author's Note:**

> HMQ builds upon this scenario in [Our Light Shone Through The Dark](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9671429) and [Animal (1988)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10358013)!


End file.
